Second NOAA abuse report remains tabled

Approximately six months have passed since Special Master Charles B. Swartwood III’s second volume of case studies into alleged violations of fishermen’s rights by NOAA law enforcement was completed and submitted to the Department of Commerce for redacting non-public information, deciding on reparations and making the document public…..But there would never have been a Swartwood I if administrator Jane Lubchenco and her chief counsel Lois Schiffer of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had had their way in 2010…..Schiffer, who joined Lubchenco’s senior staff, had written a memo to her describing an approach, which Lubchenco quietly adopted, to ignore fixable miscarriages of justice and build a reformed enforcement system without looking back. An environmental activist, Schiffer’s reputation for executive privilege dates from her time with the Justice Department in the Clinton administration.

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here